While the nation was celebrating with fireworks and cotton candy, we were home catching up on sleep and Harry Potter. We did participate in a number of blog carnivals this week, however: here is a recap of those carnivals along with a few of my favorite posts.

Carnival of Recipes

The Carnival of Recipes went live on Sunday, hosted this week by Wee Wifey.

• The Hawaiian Burger recipe (made with teriyaki sauce and pineapple juice) posted by Deputy Headmistress had me salivating.
• Emrack’s Mashed Potato Casserole sounds like a giant dish of comfort food - I can’t wait to try it.
• Chef Jules at Gourmet a Go Go has a recipe for Spiced Chicken Skewers with Herbed Cous Cous. The perfumed spices in the chicken seem like they’ll combine nicely with the apricots in the cous cous. This is definitely going in my “to try” pile.
• Our $25 Dinner Party experiment was included, with recipes for Stuffed Teriyaki Pork Loin, Peanut Ginger Noodle Salad, and Coconut Flan with Caramel Sauce.

Carnival of Personal Finance

Blogging Away Debt hosted the 107th Carnival of Personal Finance on Monday.

• Boomie at the Wastrel Show tell the story of her journey to financial independence in Start Small, Finish Big. This is a shining example of the direction that Mer and I are headed in.
• Paula at Queercents talked about Work and Happiness. She discusses what to do when you’re unhappy at your job, how to know when enough is enough, and how to find (or create) something that works for you. She makes the excellent point that no job, not even the perfect one, will make you happy — you need to rely on yourself for that.
• The media-wide hot topic this week is, of course, the iPhone. Family Finance ran the numbers in their article, The Cheapest iPhone costs $16,245, calculating what would happen if they invested the money that some people are spending on the iPhone.
• Mer’s exposition on Spaving was our contribution to this week’s carnival.

Festival of Frugality

Tuesday saw the 81st Festival of Frugality go live at Tight-Fisted Miser.

• From one extreme to the other: The Common Room discusses Drastic Budgeting in the Kitchen and MoneyNing talks about convenience foods at Groceries That Help Make Us Rich.
• Wallowing in Debt reports on her experiments in The Pros and Cons of Henna Hair Coloring. I’ve thought about going this route, but the reason I dye my hair is for the salon experience, and the “me” time it provides.
• Argonautica gives us advice on how to Avoid Vet Prices and Save Big on Pet Meds. The numbers are a little scary to me, but I think that’s because I get off easy having an indoor cat. (One vet visit a year for shots, and we’re good.)
• Estate planning is one of those things continually shuffled down our to-do list. Eric Hundin at My Estate Planning Career reminds us how important it is, and gives some basic tips in Smart Estate Planning Strategies for the Average Joe.
• Piggy Bank Raid provides some Free (and Useful) Tools — the list is short, but I love the idea of using a temporary free number when getting insurance quotes.
• Our offering to the festival gods this week was 11 Simple Kitchen Solutions That Really Work (formerly known as Spend Time Save Money).

And finally, I’d like to make a special mention of Consumerism Commentary. In this post, Flexo asked readers to post the financial advice they would give to their 13-year-old selves. Two of the posts would be selected to win a copy of Cash, Cars, and College by Janine Bolton. I found out last night that I am one of the lucky winners. Consumerism Commentary is an excellent personal finance blog that I read daily - please visit the site, or subscribe to the RSS feed today!

Have a great weekend, folks!

Image courtesy of Morgue File.

Every Friday is 11 Things day at Living Behind the Curve.

Every experience we encounter has a chance to impact our lives. We absorb it, we learn from it, and if we’re lucky we’re a little bit wiser for it. What we learn is sometimes not as surprising as where we learn it from.

How much can we learn about personal finance from grapefruit diets and exercise tapes? Eleven things, at least.

11 Diet Concepts You Can Take to the Bank

1. Drink water.
   It’s a tip that has stood the test of time, and with good reason: it’s good for you! It’s also the cheapest beverage around. Yes, I’m referring to tap water — get over yourself. Every local flavor of tap water takes some getting used to — don’t expect the water where you live now to taste the same as the water you drank out of the hose as a kid. Unless your water is contaminated, drink up.
2. Acknowledge your weaknesses.
   If your weakness is chocolate cake, and you will eat it if it’s in the house, you make sure to stay away from it, right? Well, if you know that you tend to impulse-buy vintage lamps while browsing the local flea market, stay away from the lamp stand!
3. Support is key (the Weight Watchers model).
   While you may not want to attend support groups for people looking to get their finances under control (like Debtors Anonymous), there are plenty of ways to get that support. Tell your close friends and your family what you are doing, and what you are looking to accomplish (or start a blog, and become accountable to the world. It’s great motivation.)
4. Output must exceed input in order to achieve success.
   It’s a straightforward mathematical concept: to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you take in. To build your finances, you need to spend less than you earn.
5. Recognize that you will want to cheat, and plan for it.
   You’re going to want that bag of Oreo cookies, and you’re going to want that cashmere sweater. Plan minor distractions for yourself, things you enjoy that you will do when the craving strikes. Instead of grabbing that new DVD box set, go home and play guitar instead.
6. Weigh yourself regularly.
   You need to know where you stand in order to gauge your progress and make adjustments if needed. Just don’t check in too frequently, lest you drive yourself insane.
7. Everything has hidden costs.
   This is perhaps more obvious in personal finance than in dieting, but it’s equally true in both cases. Frequently, low-fat processed food will have an enormous amount of salt and sugar to make up for the loss of taste and texture. You may have saved on your fat count, but eating that low-fat food may not have saved you any calories. In the same vein, many purchases have hidden expenses. When you buy a car, you’re not just paying for the car itself. You’re also committing yourself to insurance rates, routine maintenance, gasoline, and interest on the loan if you finance the car. You can’t necessarily avoid these hidden costs, but you should do your homework so you know what you are getting yourself into.
8. Stay positive (The Richard Simmons Effect).
   Annoying, maybe, but Richard Simmons keeps thousands of people sweatin’ to his particular musical decade of choice by motivating with positivity. I love Richard Simmons for his “you can do it!” attitude, and if he can make me dance with an invisible telephone just by making me believe that he gives a flying hoot, then that’s good stuff in my book. Ahem. Yes, Dance Your Pants Off (AKA Sweatin’ to the 80’s) is one of my dirty little secrets. Er…money! Right. If you believe that you can get your financial ducks in a row, and stay positive about it, you will have the momentum you need to succeed.
9. For lasting results, you need to change the way you think.
   Crash-dieting is as bad for your wallet as it is for your body. If you freeze your credit cards in a block of ice until they’re paid off but you don’t change any of your spending habits, you’ll be right back where you started.
10. Everything in moderation.
    If you really, really want bacon with your egg white omelet, have it — just don’t eat half a pound, fry your eggs in the drippings, and repeat every 6 hours. As goes health, so goes wealth: if you really, really want the Clerks 10th Anniversary DVD, buy it, but put down Dogma and the rest of the View Askew collection. (Trust me, you didn’t need Jersey Girl anyway.) And, while I certainly don’t recommend low-fat bacon, I do recommend low-cost fun. Whatever your pleasure, see if you can get it used.
11. Automation is the goal.
    You probably don’t want to spend every waking moment of every day counting pennies, any more than you enjoy counting carbs. Learn what works for you, and incorporate it into your daily life in such a way that, after a time, it comes naturally. You may need to remind yourself to be good every so often, but the core knowledge and values will be embedded in your subconscious, guiding you every step of the way.

I hope I’ve given you some food for thought on this warm July afternoon. Feel free to abuse this metaphor some more in the comments, or smack me about the head for a bad pun.

Image courtesy of Morgue File.

Thanks to a random drop in the Zestimate of our house, our net worth plummeted this month: we’re down $2848 to a paltry $2873. I have a feeling that number may go back up by next month, however, as the house on the corner of our block just listed for double what ours is currently worth. (Although it’s a single, it has no more square footage than our row.) Also, because I calculated our net worth later in the month (June 11) when we had more positive cash flow, our numbers were a bit skewed.

So, how close did we come to meeting our June goals?

• Increase net worth by 25%
  Net worth decreased by 50.22%. Ouch.
• Purchase Mer’s new laptop
  We never quite got around to this, but we need to get a jump on it, so that it arrives in time for the fall semester.
• Create three-year financial plan
  We never got around to this, either - it’s been bumped from one weekend to another on the calendar.

I’m not too concerned about the numbers, because the apparent loss is due to the time frame of the first report and the fluctuation of our estimated house value. We did make additional progress on saving and paying down debt this month, and those are our highest priorities.

Goals for July:

• For several reasons, including a possible change in income, our net worth goal for July is a conservative +1%. It’s a big departure from our aggressive June goal of +25%, and hopefully we’ll blow right past it.
• We’ll also be channeling any extra cash we have into building our emergency fund by at least $500. This will most likely result in a lowered debt payment for the month, but barring any major changes, we will still be on track for an end-of-year payoff.
• Our three-year financial plan will be sketched out and posted (for a little extra motivation) by the end of the month.

Adjusted goals for 2007:

• Increase net worth by 100%, down from the original 300%. I’m feeling a bit gun-shy after our June performance.
• Pay off all credit card debt. This hasn’t changed, and we’re still on target.
• Top $9000 in retirement savings. I’m scaling this back a bit (from $10k), because I’m not sure how big of an extra push we’ll be able to do at the end of the year.

Assuming that the real-estate market doesn’t face-plant in our driveway, I’m confident that these adjustments will make our short-term goals more achievable, and I don’t think that pulling back now will hurt us too much in the long run. With a little bit of luck and hard work, we’ll be able to crank things back up before the end of the year.

Every Monday is Intents and Purchases day at Living Behind the Curve.

You don’t need more money. All the frugality and personal finance bloggers that teach you the esoteric methods of growing your net worth like a vine of plump, juicy tomatoes are wrong. Living with generic toilet paper and suffering through recycled leftovers just so you can have more money is wrong. Money isn’t the point.

Save me the spluttering and indignant declarations of how you need money to pay for living, and how we can’t retire without money, and whatever else. I know that already, and you do too. I’m not saying that money isn’t essential to life, because it is when you live in a capitalist economy. What I am saying is this: people all over the Internet are posting their financial goals and net worth with almost pornographic zeal. There are bars and charts and numbers everywhere to show you just how close a person you’ve never met is to reaching their two million dollar goal. You can find out how much money a mom in Wisconsin saved by switching to cloth diapers, and how to bully your banker into giving you the highest return for your deposit. It’s numbers and percentage points and compound interest all over the place, and for what, a fat bank balance? All the money in the world isn’t going to do you a lick of good if you don’t figure out what you want to do with it.

Look, money is a tool. It won’t buy happiness, but it’ll get you one hell of a lot closer. Before you go drafting a budget or butchering a case of whole chickens, you’ve got to sit down and figure out your big goals and your little goals. My big goals are to live in The Perfect House, and not have to work very hard for someone else so I have the time to enjoy my house. My little goals are to finish college, pay off my credit card debt, and buy a new bed. I’ve sussed out the numbers, and I don’t need to be rich to do this.

Once I do reach one of my goals, big or little, I sit down and reevaluate everything I’m doing. The money I was paying on the credit card balance now goes to the bed fund. I take stock of my life to see if there’s anything new I need or want to do. Say I need to buy a new car. Is it more important than buying the bed? It’s a constant cycle of pondering exactly what it is I want to do with the rest of my life. And I don’t need to be rich to do any of it.

So what are you doing it for?

The 2nd Anniversary Edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance is up over at Get Rich Slowly. Even if you’re not a fan of blog carnivals, I would highly recommend checking this one out. It’s a best-of PF blogging extravaganza. J.D. has categorized the posts, so it’s easy to skip past any topics that don’t interest you.

A few of my favorites:

Dori and Paul talk about turning off the TV at One Year Exit Plan. I don’t plan to put my TVs in a closet anytime soon, but I do enjoy living with very little TV. My co-workers, who spend 30-45 minutes every morning discussing what was on TV last night, don’t understand why I don’t watch TV, or what I do instead. I just smile.

Adventures in Money Making offers up some excellent pointers on real estate investing. As we get closer to the time when we plan to take the plunge into rental properties, I’ll be sure to come back to this post.

My Money and My Life discusses voluntary simplicity and offers up some advice on how to make the necessary changes.

Blunt Money introduces the concept of a savings snowball (the opposite of the debt snowball). He shows how to set it up, and throws out a great incentive - savings snowballs can work faster than debt snowballs, due to the magic of compound interest.

Trent at The Simple Dollar presents a great list of helpful career tips. No matter where you are in your career — even if you’re still in school — this is excellent solid advice.

An excellent food-for-thought post is Atheists Should Tithe. Plonkee discusses how donating 10% of your income can go a long way toward a good cause: “…if nothing is going to get done unless somebody does something about it, you’d better start doing it yourself or nobody will.”

Paul at Extreme Perspective talks about why he thinks we are in the middle of the greatest economy ever. This post is a few months old, and I’d be curious to see if his feelings have changed since the latest personal savings rates numbers were released.

Advanced PF raises questions about medical tourism. I haven’t heard this term before, but an acquaintance of mine traveled overseas for surgery with excellent results. She did it for financial reasons, but also did her homework - the doctor she saw was one of the best in the business.

Finally, the Family Finance Blog points out the importance of knowing yourself when it comes to budgeting and spending. My favorite part of this article is the closing line: “if there are ways you can manage your money to make you happier rather than wealthier, do it.”

There are a number of other fabulous posts, including our own iLuddite. Do yourself a favor, and go check it out.